Capital Games | The Nation

Capital Games

Washington: a city of denials, spin, and political calculations. The Nation's former DC editor David Corn spent 2002-2007 blogging on the policies, personalities and lies that spew out of the nation's capital. The complete archive appears below. Corn is now the DC editor at Mother Jones.

The White House confirmed on Monday morning that George W. Bush's master strategist will be leaving Bush's side at the end of August. "I just think it's time," Rove told The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot. His reason for bailing on Bush: "There's always something that can keep you here, as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family." At a White House ceremony, Bush issued a brief farewell to Rove, saying little about the man who made Bush president and whom Bush reportedly nicknamed "Turd Blossom" (for Rove's ability to grow flowers in dung). Rove, visibly holding back tears, praised Bush for his "integrity, character and decency." He vowed to be a "fierce and committed advocate [for Bush] on the outside." Neither said anything explicitly about the Iraq war.

Certainly, a White House aide who has engaged in the sort of political and policy chicanery that Rove has perpetuated ought to lose the right to collect a paycheck from U.S. taxpayers. Take your pick: the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. attorney scandal, the Valerie Plame leak, inaction on global warming, injecting politics into federal agencies to a new degree, suppressing government science, the stem cell veto, tax cuts for the wealthy, politicizing the war on terror. But leaving is too good for Rove. He was Bush's partner in the Iraq war, yet he (like other Bush aides, including, most recently, Dan Bartlett) are abandoning ship before the fight is done. Rove has argued that the Iraq war is essential for the survival of the United States (that is, for all of our families). So how can he walk away with the war not won?

In June 2006, Rove gave a speech to New Hampshire Republicans and blasted Democrats for advocating "cutting and running" in Iraq. He said of the Democrats, "They may be with you for the first shots. But they're not going...to be with you for the tough battles." But isn't Rove now doing the same on a personal scale? He is departing the White House when the going in Iraq is as tough as it ever was.

In an earlier 2006 speech, Rove exclaimed, "America is at war....To retreat before victory has been won would be a reckless act." He was, of course, talking about a military retreat. But look at it this way: Rove helped Bush start a war, and now hundreds of thousands of American GIs (and millions of Iraqi civilians) have no choice but to live with the consequences of that decision. Why should Rove--and not they--be allowed to say, Sorry, now I have to bug out to spend more time with my family? How nice for the Roves that he can walk away from the war.

When Bush campaigned for president in 2000, he and Rove dubbed their campaign plane Accountability One. The point: we're the responsible ones. But a fundamental principle of accountability is that you clean up the messes you create. Rove is not doing that. He will cash in. Maybe with speeches. Perhaps with a book or some private sector spot. Instead, he ought to volunteer for service with one of the few functioning provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq. Or perhaps he could conduct seminars on basic electoral skills for tribal leaders in southeastern Afghanistan. (Lesson No. 2: How To Demonize Your Enemy.) If overseas travel would place too much of a burden on his family, he could help clean up a neighborhood in New Orleans.

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Tom and Daisy, "They were careless people...they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Rove is certainly more careful than Fitzgerald's characters--careful when it comes to politics and doing whatever is necessary to win. But with Bush, he recklessly steered this country into a debacle in Iraq that has caused the death of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and that has ruined the United States' reputation abroad. Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney and the rest did so with little understanding and with insufficient planning, and they sold the war to the public with bad information and blatant misrepresentations. (Rove was part of the White House Iraq Group that devised the prewar messaging.) Rove deserves not reward but punishment. A fitting sentence would be for Rove to stay to the bitter end so he can sweep up the turds he is now leaving behind.

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JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

Imagine this scenario: A young congressional aide who moonlights for an escort service receives a call from her madam. The woman who owns the service asks her to meet a customer at a certain spot and time. When the aide/escort arrives, she sees that the client is a member of Congress and sits on the very same committee where she works. Embarrassing? Uncomfortable? A potential scandal? They now each know a big secret about the other. She knows he is using an escort service. He knows she is working for that same service. What do they do? Is his--or her--political career in peril?

The records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a.k.a. the DC Madam, suggest that Republican Senator David Vitter came close to experiencing such an awkward moment when he served in the House of Representatives. These phone records indicate that Palfrey may have set Vitter up with an escort who was a staffer for a congressional committee that included Vitter as a member. But if the two did meet for an escort experience, Vitter escaped being found out by his (indirect) subordinate.

According to the aide/escort--whose name I'm not revealing--she would not have recognized Vitter. "It's entirely conceivable," she says, "that I encountered him [while working as an escort for Palfrey] and did not know it." This woman notes that she had been with the committee a brief time, had attended only a few of its meetings, and was not familiar with all of its members. "I wouldn't know him if I saw him," she says. Throughout her stint working for Palfrey, this woman notes, "I did not come across anyone I recognized, no public figures....We [escorts] didn't know them. They didn't know us."

Vitter has acknowledged calling Pamela Martin and Associates, the escort service Palfrey ran until 2006. "This was a very serious sin in my past," he said in a statement released to the Associated Press on July 9, after Time magazine notified his office that Vitter's phone number was on Palfrey's billing records. (A Hustler editor contacted Vitter's office minutes after a Time reporter did.) But Vitter, who has campaigned on family values and who argued in 1998 that President Bill Clinton had to be impeached for his immoral conduct, has refused to say anything specific about his use of the escort service, and he has declined to resign from the Senate. Vitter's office did not respond to a request for a comment for this story.

According to Palfrey, this is how her business worked. A prospective client would call a local Washington phone number. She would answer the call at her Vallejo, California, home. (Most of her billing records do not show these incoming calls.) The man would ask for an escort and perhaps make special requests. Palfrey would then phone her employees in Washington to find someone appropriate for the customer. Next, she would call the client back and confirm the session. These long-distance outgoing calls to her escorts and to the customers are listed on her phone bills. As she explains it, in certain instances one can determine which woman was dispatched to a client by looking at the phone numbers that appear before the phone number of the customer. On one phone bill, the number of the aide/escort appears before a phone number for Vitter.

The phone records are not conclusive evidence that this congressional aide and Vitter had a professional meeting outside the committee room. But Palfrey says that would be a reasonable reading of the documents. (Palfrey says she has no direct knowledge that Vitter was a client because she knew most of her customers by first names or aliases. She no longer has detailed records showing which escorts visited which clients.)

I am not naming the aide/escort because this woman, unlike Vitter, has not engaged in public hypocrisy. Also, I have no evidence she broke the law. (Palfrey claims her women engaged in fantasy role-playing with their customers; the government, in its prosecution of Palfrey, maintains she ran a prostitution ring.) This woman left Capitol Hill and Palfrey's business years ago. With the help of investigative reporter Dan Moldea, who first discovered Vitter's number on Palfrey's telephone bills while working with Larry Flynt, I found her. When I contacted her, she was unaware that Palfrey had been busted, that Palfrey had posted the escort service's telephone records on the Internet, or that Vitter had been caught in the scandal. She asked me not to use her name: "It was a long time ago."

It's a curious episode. Vitter might have hired an escort with whom he worked in Congress. In most circumstances, committee aides can recognize the lawmakers they serve. What might have happened had this aide done so with Vitter? Exposure? Intrigue? Danger? "It was apparently a very close call," the woman says. "This could make a great a screenplay." But in this situation--if it did come to pass--Vitter was lucky. He was not on her radar screen. The congressman would have been just another john.

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JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

I can see the ad now: Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, Bashar al-Assad, and Hugo Chavez all strolling into the White House, and a grinning Barack Obama greeting them with a friendly "Welcome, boys; what do you want to talk about?"

If Obama gets close to the Democratic presidential nomination, pro-Hillary Clinton forces could air such an ad. If he wins the nomination, the Republicans could hammer him with such a spot.

In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since. In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

Obama took the question first. He replied,

I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous. Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.

The crowd responded with applause. His answer seemed fine. It was only moments later that the problem became obvious. Sorta, who was also in the audience, put the same question to Senator Hillary Clinton. She said:

Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don't want to make a situation even worse. But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration. And I will purse very vigorous diplomacy.

And I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly, we're not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.

Yes, and I think actually Senator Clinton's right though. Before that meeting takes place, we need to do the work, the diplomacy, to make sure that that meeting's not going to be used for propaganda purposes, will not be used to just beat down the United States of America in the world community. But I think this is just a piece of a bigger question, which is, what do we actually do? What should the president of the United States do to restore America's moral leadership in the world. It's not enough just to meet with bad leaders. In addition to that, the world needs to hear from the president of the United States about who we are, what it is we represent.

Obama had suggested he would sit down with these leaders willy-nilly, no preconditions. Clinton and Edwards explained that that they would use diplomacy to try to improve relations with these nations and that such an effort could lead to a one-on-one with these heads of state.

Obama had responded from the gut, working off a correct critique of the Bush administration's skeptical approach toward diplomacy. But his answer lacked the sophistication of Clinton's and Edwards' replies. And this moment illustrated perhaps the top peril for the Obama campaign: with this post-9/11 presidential contest, to a large degree, a question of who should be the next commander in chief, any misstep related to foreign policy is a big deal for a candidate who has little experience in national security matters.

Clinton, with her years as First Lady and her stint as a member of the Senate armed services committee, and Edwards, with his tenure on the Senate intelligence committee, are steeped in the nuances, language, and minefields of foreign policy. (Among the second-tier candidates, Senator Joe Biden, Senator Chris Dodd, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson can boast extensive national security experience.) Though Obama was against the Iraq war before he was a senator, he has not developed his foreign policy chops. That's understandable; he's only been on the national scene for two years. (Prior to that, he was doing admirable work as a state legislator, a civil rights attorney, and a community organizer.) So he is more prone to commit mistakes in this area--perhaps stupid mistakes--that can be easily exploited by his opponents. And in the post-9/11 era, there's not much room in national politics for such errors.

During the 2004 Democratic presidential contest, Howard Dean had the foreign policy positions that resonated most with Democratic voters. He was opposed to the Iraq war; Senator John Kerry had voted to let George W. Bush invade Iraq. But Dean, like Obama, had not spent years talking and doing foreign policy. He made some dumb gaffes. On Meet the Press Tim Russert asked Dean this question:

Let's talk about the military budget. How many men and women would you have on active duty?

Dean flubbed his response:

I can't answer that question. And I don't know what the answer is.

Later in the race, Dean repeatedly referred to Russia as the "Soviet Union," a country that had not existed for 13 years.

Such remarks were not the downfall of Dean. But they did allow others to suggest he was not ready for prime time regarding national security matters. (Of course, neither was George W. Bush, but he had the good fortune of running in the last pre-9/11 election.) About Dean, Kerry said, "All the advisers in the world can't give Howard Dean the military and foreign policy experience, leadership skills...necessary to lead this country through dangerous times." Obama is obviously susceptible to a similar attack--from a Democrat or a Republican.

For Obama to have a chance of toppling front-running Clinton, he will have a near-perfect performance from now until the actual voting. During the YouTube debate, Obama generally did fine. But he did not differentiate himself from Clinton in a significant manner. After all, there is not much difference between their current positions. He did take a strong shot at her during a series of questions about the Iraq war:

One thing I have to say about Senator Clinton's comments a couple of moments ago. I think it's terrific that she's asking for plans from the Pentagon, and I think the Pentagon response was ridiculous. But what I also know is that the time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we went in. And that is something that too many of us failed to do. We failed to do it. And I do think that that is something that both Republicans and Democrats have to take responsibility for.

The crowd cheered, but one swing at Clinton does not a campaign make. Yes, there are months to go in the preprimary maneuvering, but at some point--probably sooner than later--Obama is going to have to make a move. Meanwhile, he also has to avoid such mistakes as promising to open the doors of the White House without conditions to Kim Jong Il and others of that ilk. He cannot let Stephen Sorta of Diamond Bar, California, trip him up again.

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JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

In the fall of 1998, David Vitter felt compelled to weigh in on the national debate over the possible impeachment of President Bill Clinton for lying about sex. Vitter was not yet a member of Congress; he was a Republican state representative. And in an October 29, 1998, opinion piece for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Vitter took issue with a previous article, written by two law professors who had argued that impeachment "is a process of removing a president from office who can no longer effectively govern; it is not about punishment." Given that Clinton was still a capable chief executive, they had maintained, impeachment was not in order.

Vitter, a graduate of Harvard University and Tulane law school and a Rhodes scholar, was aghast at this amoral position. He blasted the law professors for criticizing those congressional Republicans pushing for Clinton's impeachment. Their argument that impeachment is "not primarily about right and wrong or moral fitness to govern," he wrote, was utterly wrongheaded. He continued:

Some current polls may suggest that people are turned off by the whole Clinton mess and don't care -- because the stock market is good, the Clinton spin machine is even better or other reasons. But that doesn't answer the question of whether President Clinton should be impeached and removed from office because he is morally unfit to govern.

The writings of the Founding Fathers are very instructive on this issue. They are not cast in terms of political effectiveness at all but in terms of right and wrong -- moral fitness. Hamilton writes in the Federalists Papers(No. 65) that impeachable offenses are those that "proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."

In considering impeachment, Vitter asserted, Congress had to judge Clinton on moral terms. Decrying the law professors' failure to see this, Vitter observed, "Is that the level of moral relatively [sic] and vacuousness we have come to?" If no "meaningful action" were to be taken against Clinton, Vitter wrote, "his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture."

Strong words. Now that Vitter, who entered the House of Representatives in 1999 after winning a special election to fill the seat of Representative Bob Livingston (who resigned after being caught in an adultery scandal) and who was elected senator in 2004, has admitted he placed a phone call to the so-called DC Madam, his constituents can only wonder if he will hold himself to the same standards he sought to apply to Bill Clinton.

Vitter, who is married with four children, has been a vigorous advocate of family values, championing abstinence-only programs and calling for a ban on gay marriage. In a statement his office rushed out on Monday night--before he could be outed by Hustler magazine--Vitter said he had committed a "serious sin" and claimed that "several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling." I seem to recall that Bill Clinton took a similar stance after he acknowledged his affair with Monica Lewinsky. That, though, did not prevent Vitter from calling for Clinton's forcible removal from office.

Perhaps Vitter ought to revisit the issue of whether the absence of moral fitness is a firing offense for a public official.

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JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

The president who led the nation into a disastrous war in Iraq by peddling false statements and misrepresentations has come to the rescue of a White House aide convicted of lying by commuting his sentence. Before the ink was dry on today's court order denying Scooter Libby's latest appeal--a motion to allow him to stay out of jail while he was challenging his conviction--George W. Bush commuted Libby's sentence. Libby will no longer have to serve the 30-month prison sentence ordered by federal district court Judge Reggie Walton. He will, though, have to pay the $250,000 fine that was part of the sentence.

The commutation--which is not a pardon and does not erase Libby's conviction--is a reminder that Bush and his crew do not believe in accountability. Bush has been rather stingy in the use of his pardon power. And regulations issued by his Justice Department note that recipients of pardons should serve their sentences and demonstrate contrition before obtaining presidential absolution. (Libby had expressed no remorse and was not scheduled to report to jail for several weeks.) Yet with this commutation, Bush ducked those requirements, and he is allowing Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was found guilty of lying to federal investigators in the CIA leak case, to go unpunished. The fine will be no problem for Libby. His neoconservative friends and admirers will kick in to cover that tab. (Perhaps even Cheney will send a check.)

Libby had become a symbol of the Bush White House's problem with the truth. After all, his lies had been designed to block FBI agents and federal prosecutors from learning the full truth of a White House effort to discredit a critic who had accused the Bush administration of twisting the prewar intelligence. And now the final act in the long-running CIA leak scandal--Bush's commutation--stands as another symbol of this grand theme: lying doesn't really bother this crowd. In the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush claimed he would bring responsibility to the White House and, as a PR stunt, he dubbed his campaign jet Accountability One. Yet with this commutation, he takes the position that in his administration an aide who purposefully misleads government officials investigating a possible national security crime need not be held fully accountable.

This is no shocker. Early on in the CIA leak affair, the White House announced that anyone involved in the 2003 leak that disclosed the CIA employment of Valerie Wilson, an undercover Agency officer, would be booted out of the administration. But Karl Rove, who had disclosed classified information about Valerie Wilson to two reporters and who apparently lied about his actions to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, was not pink-slipped. Bush has never acknowledged this broken promise. (Libby left the White House only after he was indicted in the fall of 2005.)

Bush shielded Rove, and now--better late than never--he's doing the same for Libby. Ever since Libby's conviction in March, neoconservative and conservative Libby partisans have been urging--or demanding--that Bush pardon Libby. They have cried that his indictment, his conviction, and his sentence were travesties of justice. They blasted Bush for declining to intervene in the proceedings, branding the president (their pal!) a coward. They acted as if Bush's refusal to pardon Libby was a personal betrayal of each and everyone of them. They showed more concern for Libby than any of the civilians who have perished in Iraq in the years since they, Libby and their allies engineered the invasion of Iraq. Libby was their cause; he was one of them.

Once again, Bush, being nudged by the neocons, has sent a clear message: telling the truth doesn't matter. Bush has refused to acknowledge that he, Cheney, and other administration officials--to be polite about it--stretched the truth about Iraq and the threat it posed before the war. Today, he says that if you lie to protect the White House (especially the vice president), you can escape retribution. But if Bush, Cheney and the others could get away with big untruths about war, why shouldn't Libby get away with small lies about a cover-up? Fair's fair, right?

The foundation of a democratic judicial system is that the sentence fits the crime. In this instance, the commutation fits the administration.

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JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

This afternoon, after three appeals court judges turned down Scooter Libby's latest appeal, George W. Bush commuted the convincted felon's sentence, wiping out the 30 month prison stay a federal judge had handed Libby. But the $250,000 fine remains. I'll have more on this later...

Is Scooter Libby really going to jail now? Today a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, turned down Libby's request to remain free on bond while his attorneys appeal his conviction on obstruction of justice charges. In a two-sentence ruling, the three judges said that Libby "has not shown that the appeal raises a substantial [legal] question." This means that Libby will have to report to a federal penitentiary as soon as the Bureau of Prisons finds a spot for him, and that could occur within weeks.

Libby's defenders--the folks who claimed he was wrongfully investigated, then wrongfully indicted, then wrongfully convicted by a jury, then wrongfully sentenced to 30 months and a $250,000 fine--will no doubt say this matter was wrongfully decided by these three judges (one of whom was a Ronald Reagan appointee and one of whom was a George H.W. Bush appointee). But (hopeless) legal arguments aside, this ruling will cause the neocons (and their conservative allies) to intensify the campaign for a Libby pardon. (I recently detailed the Let Libby Go crusade here.) Now the Libby Lobby will pump up the volume, pressing George W. Bush to intervene.

Libby's champions seem to be motivated, in part, by an intense sense of personal betrayal. Libby partisans have essentially accused Bush of being an ingrate and coward for not rushing to the rescue of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. With the clock ticking on Jail Day for Libby, the Save Scooter advocates can be expected to voice further their frustration and resentment.

Will Bush yield? There's no telling. So far he's kept his distance from the Libby case--which stands as a reminder that Bush led the nation to an unpopular war on the basis of misrepresentations and false statements. But one thing's for sure: if Bush doesn't pardon this former White House aide, he will receive plenty of abuse from people who once hailed him for initiating the war they had craved for years. The pro-war neocons often appear distant from the disastrous consequences of the invasion of Iraq, including the civilian casualties of the war. But when it comes to the plight of Libby, an architect of the war convicted of lying, they feel his pain so passionately. We are all Scooter!, they practically proclaim. And in a way, they're right.

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JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

Today, the CIA released its infamous "Family Jewels" file. This is a set of internal memos compiled in the mid-1970s after press reports revealed numerous CIA dirty tricks. In 1973, CIA director James Schlessinger, having learned that Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord (each a CIA veteran) had been in contact with the Agency while carrying out illegal activities for President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign, ordered divisions within the CIA to report any activities they had engaged in since 1959 that might be outside the CIA's authority. Deputy Director William Colby then assembled a loose-leaf notebook of the memos that poured in. The whole package totaled 700 pages. And though its existence has been known for years--congressional investigators of the 1970s had access to these documents--this secret file has never before been made public. It was considered to hold the agency's darkest secrets.

Many of these secrets did emerge during the congressional investigations of the 1970s: the joint CIA-Mafia attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro; CIA surveillance of American reporters and political dissidents; the CIA's secret jailing for three years of a suspected Soviet agent (who was not a Soviet agent). The newly-released documents are full of fresh details about some of these notorious episodes. But at least one of the "Family Jewels" seems to be missing.

The first document in the packet is a 1973 memo from Howard Osborn, then the CIA's director of security, to the CIA top management, and it summarizes the "jewels" compiled by his office. It lists eight problems--including the recruitment of mobster Johnny Roselli for the Castro hit. But blacked out from this document is the first item on Osborn's list. And a two-and-a-half page description of this operation is also redacted from the "Family Jewels" file.

In a recent speech, General Michael Hayden, the CIA's director, hailed the declassification of the "Family Jewels." He remarked, "The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and very different Agency." Yet the very first secret in these papers has been deleted.

"The No. 1 jewel of the CIA's Office of Security is probably a pretty good one--especially since the second jewel in this list is the Roselli/Castro assassination program," says Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a public interest outfit that filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the "Family Jewels" fifteen years ago. There are many other deletions in the "Family Jewels" file, and in most instances there's no telling exactly what has been excised. But much of the censored material seems to be related to how the CIA has created cover and fake documents. "This is probably justifiable," says Blanton, because such operational secrets may still be relevant today. But the missing jewel? Assassination? Domestic spying? Something unimaginable? "We just don't know," says Blanton.

All in all, Blanton notes, the file is not as explosive as CIA-watchers might have anticipated. "These are the 'Family Jewels'?" he asks sarcastically. "Much of this came out years ago. So how could the CIA justify keeping this stuff secret for 30 years? This is not really as informative as the [previously released] inspector general's report on the Castro assassination plots."

There are, however, intriguing tidbits scattered throughout these hundreds of pages. Here are a few:

* In a June 1, 1973 memo written to Colby, Walter Elder, who had been executive assistant for John McCone, the CIA director in the early 1960s, outlined "activities which to hostile observers or to someone without complete knowledge...could be interpreted as examples of activities exceeding CIA's charters." One such activity, he noted, "involved chemical warfare operations against...." The target is redacted. This operation, according to Elder, never went beyond the planning stage.

* In the same memo, Elder reports that discussions within the CIA chief's offices were recorded and transcribed: "I know that any one who has worked in the Director's office has worried about the fact that conversations within the offices and over the telephones were transcribed. During McCone's tenure, there were microphones in his regular office, his inner office, his dining room, his office in East Building, and his study at his residence on White Haven Street. I do not know who would be willing to raise such an issue, but knowledge of such operations tends to spread, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable on this score." Secret transcripts of conversations involving CIA directors? According to Blanton, there's never been any public indication that McCone or other CIA directors bugged themselves. Transcripts of such discussions could contain plenty of jewels. The National Security Archive is already filing a Freedom of Information Act request.

* One memo notes that CIA had a Project OFTEN that collected "data on dangerous drugs from U.S. firms" until the program was terminated in the fall of 1972. Another memo reports that commercial drug manufacturers "passed on" to the CIA drugs "rejected because of unfavorable side effects" These drugs were then tested using volunteers from the U.S. military.

* During the internal review that led to the creation of the "Family Jewels" file, a top CIA official suggested that the CIA director keep himself in the dark about MKULTRA--the Agency's mind control program run by Sidney Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and chemist. As part of this program, the CIA slipped LSD and other psychoactive drugs to unwitting subjects. (Gottlieb, according to another document in the file, was supposed to have provided poison in for an assassination attempt against Patrice Lumumba, the anti-colonial prime minister of the Republic of Congo. After being deposed in a 1960 coup, Lumumba was shot and killed by Kantangan forces.)

* CIA employees assigned to MHCHAOS--the operation that conducted surveillance against American opponents of the Vietnam war and other political dissidents--expressed a "high degree of resentment" about being given such a mission.

* The CIA "performed image enhancement techniques" on video footage of the television show of columnist Jack Anderson, who had received leaks of top-secret CIA documents. "The purpose was to try to identify serial numbers of CIA documents in Anderson's possession"--presumably documents he held up or that were on his desk. The memo on this operation does not say if the effort succeeded.

Hayden, the CIA chief, deserves some credit for releasing the "Family Jewels," and he wants the public to believe that his CIA is not your father's CIA, which plotted assassinations, illegally opened mail, and spied on American political dissidents. But the CIA in recent days has run secret prisons and used interrogation methods that either involve torture or border on torture. (The details are sketchy.) And the National Security Agency has used warrantless wiretaps to eavesdrop on American citizens and residents. Moreover, as the release of the "Family Jewels" demonstrates, there still are secrets from the past the CIA will not disclose. Are these legitimate secrets that ought to be kept from the public to protect national security, or are they embarrassments the Agency is not willing to face? Only the secret-keepers of the CIA know which jewels remain buried.

JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

In 1971, Edgar Kaiser, the son of the founder of Kaiser Permanente, one of the first big HMOs, went to see John Ehrlichman, a top aide to President Nixon, to lobby the Nixon White House to pass legislation that would expand the market for health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Ehrlichman reported this conversation to Nixon on February 17, 1971. The discussion, which was taped, went like this:

Ehrlichman: I had Edgar Kaiser come in...talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make.

President Nixon: Fine.

The next day, Nixon publicly announced he would be pushing legislation that would provide Americans "the finest health care in the world."

When tapes of the Nixon-Ehrlichman conversation and Nixon's subsequent public statement are played halfway through Michael Moore's new movie SiCKO, it is one of the film's more revealing moments. By this point in the film, Moore has already demonstrated that health insurance companies and HMOs are parasitic villains that routinely deny necessary medical care to make more bucks--even when their money-grubbing leads to the death of patients. Looking for the original sin that led to the present mess, Moore zeroes in on this Nixonian moment, which encapsulates the film's premise that the United States health care system is defined by a fundamental conflict: profit versus care, and--no surprise--profit beats care.

Moore makes this point magnificently in SiCKO, which is the best film in the Moore canon. I say this as one who had a mixed reaction to Fahrenheit 9/11. (See here.) This time around, Moore has crafted a tour de force that his enemies will have a tough time blasting (though they will still try). It's not as tendentious as his earlier works. It posits no conspiracy theories. The film skillfully blends straight comedy, black humor, tragedy, and advocacy. You laugh, you cry--literally. And you get mad.

The film stitches together a string of health care horror stories. Moore opens the movie by looking at two cases involving Americans who don't have health insurance. One fellow who sliced off the tips of two fingers is told at the hospital that he can attach the ring finger for $12,000 and the middle finger for $60,000. He can't afford both. Ever the romantic, Moore reports, this man opts to save his ring finger.

But SiCKO is not about the uninsured. It's about those who have insurance and who have been screwed. Moore began this project by advertising on the Web for tales of health care woe. Within a week, he had received 25,000 emails. That's plenty of raw material. One enterprising father of a child who was going deaf and whose insurance company would only pay for one ear implant wrote his insurance firm and asked if its CEOs would like to appear in Moore's film. The company--whaddayaknow--quickly authorized payment for the other implant.

From this flood of complaints, Moore drew compelling and heartbreaking stories. A woman is denied payment for a major procedure because she neglected to mention on her insurance application that she once had a yeast infection (which was, of course, unrelated to the procedure she needed). A mother loses her 18-month-old daughter because a hospital won't treat her without authorization from her insurance company and her insurer insists she takes the child (during an emergency situation) to an in-network hospital. A woman who was in a car crash is denied payment for an ambulance trip because she did not receive pre-approval for that cost. A man is denied a bone-marrow transplant that could save his life and dies.

Moore interviews health care industry insiders who confirm the worst suspicions. A former employee at a health insurance sales centers cries as she talks about how she was trained to handle prospective clients who might be health risks. "I'm such a bitch on the phone," she says. Doctors who worked for health care companies tell how they were encouraged to deny claims to save their companies money. Medical reviewers for one health insurance company who rendered the most denials received bonuses. Footage from a video surveillance camera shows a Los Angeles hospital dumping an indigent patient on Skid Row. "Who are we?" Moore asks. "Is this what we have become: a nation that dumps its own citizens?"

Moore's meta-message is, It doesn't have to be this way. He visits Canada, England, and France and compares their health care delivery systems to America's. He plays this for loads of yucks. In a British hospital, he goes looking for the place where a patient has to pay his or her bill. He cannot find such a check-out counter. Then--a-ha!--he finds a cashier. But--here comes the punch line--this is where the hospital hands out cash to patients who need a few pounds to cover the cost of their transportation home. Yes, in a British hospital you can leave with more money than you came in with.

What about those put-upon doctors who must work under the heavy yoke of Britain's National Health Service? He interviews a young doctor who drives a new Audi and lives in a posh million-dollar flat. The British system, the doc says, is fine for doctors--unless you want to live in a $3 million flat and own three or four cars. As for drugs, every prescription in England costs the equivalent of ten bucks--no matter what drug or how much of it. An American who blew out his shoulder trying to walk across the famous intersection at Abbey Road on his hands tells Moore that he obtained great hospital care for no money.

Ditto Canada. Ditto France. Doing his I-can't-believe-it act, Moore grills Americans and locals in each country who relate stories of receiving quality care for no payments. A Canadian doctor, with a straight face, says that he has "never told anyone we couldn't put a finger back on" because of a patient's inability to pay. In the land of surrender-monkeys, Moore discovers that government-paid doctors--Sacre bleu!--make house calls, and new parents are visited by federally-paid daycare providers. And get this: a fellow who completes chemo in France gets three months of paid leave to recuperate (on a beach in the south of France, no less). No wonder, the United States ranks 37th in the world when it comes to the health of its citizens, just edging out Slovenia.

Moore whacks the U.S. political system for catering to the needs of the insurance industry not the citizenry, pointing out that the health care lobby pumps millions of dollars into the campaigns of lawmakers. He notes that Senator Hillary Clinton, once the scourge of the health care industry, has become a top recipient of contributions from health care firms. (Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, executive producer of the film and a friend of Hillary Clinton, pressed Moore to cut that part of the film. Moore turned him down. In a recent interview, Weinstein conceded he had asked Moore to delete this portion.)

In the film's climax, Moore gets on a boat in Miami with three 9/11 rescue workers who have been unable to obtain the necessary treatment for ailments apparently caused by their exposure to debris at Ground Zero. His mission: bring them and other health care industry victims to the Guatanamo detention facility in Cuba, where (according to the Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders) the detainees typically receive fine medical treatment. Gitmo, Moore cracks, is "the only place on American soil with free universal health care."

Moore's small flotilla approaches the camp. He takes out a bullhorn and shouts, I have three 9/11 rescue workers who need medical attention. He adds, They just want the kind of treatment al Qaeda is getting. No one in the guard tower responds. A siren goes off. Maybe we better leave, he says. Moore takes the rescue workers and the others to the Havana Hospital where they receive--as do all Cubans there--free quality treatment.

Sure, it's a stunt--but a telling one. One of the rescue workers is living on a monthly disability payment of $1000. Her inhaler costs $120, and she needs at least two a month. She breaks down and cries when she learns she can purchase the same drug in Cuba for five cents. Were she a suspected terrorist in Gitmo, she would get the device for free.

Moore's right. The health care system in the United States is a bad deal for many Americans. (Don't get me started about Oxford, which routinely denies almost every claim I submit for my family.) He glosses over some of the problems overseas (the French social welfare system is under much pressure), but he debunks the hyperbolic scare-'em criticisms hurled at the Canadian and British systems by free-marketeers who defend the U.S. system. As for the charge that a universal health care system would be "socialized medicine," Moore rightfully counters that in the United States there's socialism when it comes to the public well-being; there are public schools, public fire departments, and public libraries. What about public health?

In the film, Canadians, Brits and French laugh at Americans for their cockamamie health care system. Explaining their own systems, they all say that it's a matter of communal security: we take care of each other. In other words, leave no citizen behind. Moore does not explicitly call for a particular set of reforms. But he clearly wants a taxpayer-funded system that cuts out the insurance companies and provides universal care to all.

Health care policy can be mind-numbingly complicated. Try to sort out the differences between Senator Barack Obama's health care plan and Senator John Edwards' proposal. And remember the wire chart the GOP cooked up for Hillary Clinton's proposed reform? But Moore, to his credit, cuts through the surface-level details and gets to the essentials. Why not health care for all? Why allow corporate profit-mongers to decide whether an 18-month-old girl lives or dies? Why is the population of the United States, as wealthy as this nation is, not as healthy as the population of Britain, France, Canada, and 33 other countries? Why settle for a sick system?

Advocates of universal health care (note I say care, not coverage) are hoping SiCKO leads to political change. The California Nurses Association, which supports a single-payer system, is organizing across the country in conjunction with the movie's appearance. It's hard to see a film moving a nation--and, in particular, the politicians who pocket all those health care industry dollars. But Moore has produced a work that maximizes his talents as social critic, humorist, filmmaker, journalist, and advocate. SiCKO is brilliantly funny and sad. It's a dead-on diagnosis. Don't get sick before seeing this film.

*****

JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

One spoke to the heart. One spoke to the head. But both presidential candidates had the same mission: to prevent Senator Hillary Clinton from claiming the soul of their party.

On Tuesday, at the annual Take Back America conference--a three-day gathering in Washington, DC, of thousands of progressive activists--Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards, each an aspirant for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, delivered back-to-back speeches that delineated the stark difference in their political courtship styles.

Obama went first. He started with his own story, talking about his days as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, when he was paid $12,000 a year by church groups to help establish job training and after-school programs in a neighborhood hit hard by a steel plant closing. He described his subsequent entry into local politics and decried a Washington dominated by special interests where "all you see...is another scandal, or a petty argument, or the persistent stubbornness of a President who refuses to end this war in Iraq." Blasting lobbyists for oil and pharmaceutical companies, he exclaimed, "They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter, they think they own this government, but we;re here to tell them it's not for sale."

That was a good applause line. The cynical ways of Washington, he said, are of no use to an Iowa couple he met who own a small business and cannot longer afford health care coverage. Pay-to-play politics in Washington, he pointed out, does not help the workers of Newton, Iowa, who lost their jobs when Maytag closed their plant and shipped their jobs overseas; nor does it do much for the still-homeless in New Orleans, the 45 million Americans without health insurance, and the 15 million American children living in poverty. "The time for the can't-do, won't-do, won't-even-try style of politics is over," Obama proclaimed. "It's time to turn the page."

And to turn the page requires..hope. Obama, jokingly referring to himself as a "hope-monger," maintained that hope gets results, and he pointed to his accomplishments as a state senator in Illinois: passing legislation that tightened government ethics rules, that reformed the death penalty, and that expanded health care insurance for children. His big message: hope can cause transformation. Washington can be changed; the nation can be changed. He knows that because his own life marks a transformation in America. "On paper," he said, it is impossible that I am here--a U.S. senator running for president." It was obvious what he meant: a black U.S. senator running for president.

Obama touched the right policy points. He promised to sign into a law a universal health care plan by the end of his first term. He called for more money for education. He vowed to place a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions and raise fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. He voiced support for a minimum wage that is a living wage and for legislation that would help unions organize workers. He urged the shutdown of the Guantanamo detention facility. Noting that he had opposed the Iraq war from the start--"we knew back then that it was dangerous diversion from the struggle against the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th; we knew back then that we could find ourselves in an occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences"--he highlighted his previous proposal to begin the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

But his appeal was not his policy shopping list. He was promoting himself foremost as an agent of change who can bring about "a new kind of politics." He offered the crowd "a simple truth, a truth I learned all those years ago as an organizer in Chicago...that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it."

And he connected. The crowd was jazzed by the combo of personal story, progressive policy proposals, and message of transformation. For an audience member looking to be inspired--to be wowed--Obama made it easy. I am your man, he proclaimed. He was convincing.

Moments after Obama was done, Edwards took to the stage. He said little about himself. But he opened by stating he had been wrong to vote to grant George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq. Congress, he insisted, must display strength and conviction and shut down Bush's war. (This was a slight dig at Obama and Clinton, who recently voted against Iraq war funding but who have not been vocal leaders in opposing funding for the war.) But his primary theme extended beyond the war. America, he said, is currently regarded with disdain throughout the world. Instead, it must become a global "force for good."

He went through the litany. The United States has failed the world in its weak response to the genocide of Darfur. The United States has failed the world by not doing enough to spur economic development in the poorer regions of the globe. (He hailed micro-lending programs.) The United States has failed the world by refusing to limit its carbon emissions. But imagine, he said, if the United States would change its energy policies and reduce its oil consumption. Oil prices would fall and Middle Eastern autocrats would have less money in their pockets. And imagine, he said, if the United States and Europe turned toward biofuels. Africa--a continent full of cheap land and cheap labor--could become a source of such energy supplies. "Millions of children," Edwards said, "would be lifted of poverty."

From global warming to biofuels to poverty in Africa. This was a bit Clintonian--as in Bill. Edwards was displaying his policy wonkishness, while offering himself as a man who knows what must be done to lead the United States in the post-Bush world.

Next, he turned to domestic matters. He referred to his antipoverty policy work of recent years. He called for a national housing policy that does not "cluster poor people together." He proposed a "College for Everyone" program that would provide students money for tuition and books if they worked ten hours a week. He promoted his own universal health care proposal, suggesting it was more universal than Obama's. "I will speak for the poor," he said. "I will speak for the uninsured. I will speak for the disenfranchised. This is my life." Paraphrasing Gandhi, he remarked, "You have to be the change you believe in." The audience applauded Edwards, but he had not rocked the house as much as Obama had.

Edwards, who became wealthy as a successful trial attorney, was arguing a case. Obama, the former organizer, had delivered a motivational speech. There was much overlap between the two presentations: America has to treat its less-fortunate citizens better; it must repair its relationship to the rest of the world; and all this depends on you. There were no apparent policy differences. (Only health care experts can argue how the health care plans of these two candidates vary.) Yet each speech was a different experience. Obama spoke as if he was addressing people looking for love. Edwards spoke as if he was before people about to make a hire. Either man, though, will have to win votes of both affection and confidence to best the woman in the lead.

UPDATE: To see how Hillary Clinton tried to out-populist Obama and Edwards at the Take Back America conference, see my report here.

*****

JUST OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.